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Backroom Boy Who Has the President Running Scared |
Current rating: 0 |
by Rupert Cornwell
(No verified email address) |
27 Mar 2004
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Ms Rice's public utterances have only fueled the controversy, contradicting Mr Clarke on a host of points. Startlingly, she is at odds with none other than Mr Bush's most powerful adviser of all, Dick Cheney. Mr Clarke, sniffed the vice-President this week, was "not in the loop", which is normally the ultimate Washington bureaucratic put-down. But not this time. Because in order to shore up the White House's basic contention that it did know what it was doing before 9/11, Ms Rice has had to make clear that its own counter-terrorism chief was indeed "in the loop." No wonder that newsrooms are dusting off that old headline 'White House in Disarray,' not seen since the most chaotic days of the Clinton presidency. |
Until this week, al-Qa'ida expert Richard Clarke was a backroom nobody. Not any more, he ain't. And what's worse, he now spells nothing but big, big trouble for George W. Bush and his presidency.
Because not only is Richard Clarke a political sensation, the man who alleges that Bush's national security team was asleep at the wheel in the months before September 11 2001 when intelligence specialists were warning of an impending terrorist strike; he is also a publishing sensation of the first magnitude.
In just four days his book 'Against All Enemies' sold out an initial print run of 300,000, and the 150,000 hurridly reprinted extra copies also look set to fly off the shelves. Which, for serious non-fiction dealing largely with arcane matters of policy process in Washington, is astonishing.
Of course, the moment of publication was perfect - 24 hours before the federal commission set up to examine whether the 9/11 attacks could have been prevented held its highest profile public hearings thus far, featuring the CIA director and the Secretaries of State and Defense for both Presidents Clinton and Bush.
But it was Mr Clarke's own appearance that provided arguably the most gripping testimony at a public hearing since the Iran-Contra affair in 1987 briefly threatened the Presidential prospects of George Bush senior.
This was no Washington insiders' feast, which typically leaves the rest of the country indifferent. A poll found that 42 per cent of the population was very aware of the furor set off by Mr Clarke, and that only 10 per cent knew nothing about it.
No wonder the Bush administration was scared stiff, summoning reporters to the White House for on-the-record trashings of Mr Clarke and generally doing all in its power to smear his motives. He was represented as either a mischief-making Democrat (though he voted for Mr Bush in 2000) or a man embittered by being passed over last year for the No.2 job at the new Department of Homeland Security. The White House even produced a briefing that Mr Clarke gave to selected journalists back in summer 2002 in an attempt to show that what he was saying then is the exact opposite to what he says now.
One way and another, even by the brutal standards of this White House, the wrecking operation has been unprecedented.
But the stakes could not be higher. Mr Clarke's central charge - that before 9/11 the administration was so obsessed by Iraq that it took its eye off the al-Qa'ida threat - trumps the most powerful single card in Bush's campaign for re-election.
Thus Democrat nominee designate John Kerry could not have believed his good fortune as the Bush crowd messed up one thing after another.
First there was Dubya's 'joke' at a correspondents' dinner here on Wednesday about him searching under the furniture in the Oval Office for those missing Iraqi WMDs.
This is lapse of taste which will be potent ammunition for Mr Kerry in the campaigning months ahead, as will the hiring freeze announced yesterday at the same Homeland Security department that was set up to protect against future terrorist attacks on the US mainland.
Then there is the small matter of Condoleezza Rice, the President's national security adviser and the person most directly implicated in Mr Clarke's memoirs. So far the White House has turned down repeated requests by the 9/11 commission that Ms Rice testify in public, citing the separation of powers in the constitution whereby a Presidential adviser who is not subject to Congressional approval does not give evidence to bodies set up by the legislative branch - which has not stopped Ms Rice from summoning reporters to her office for on-the-record rebuttals of Mr Clarke's charges.
Meanwhile the White House has offered the commission another opportunity to meet privately with her. But why not in public, like Messrs Tenet, Rumsfeld and Powell? Now, rightly or wrongly, that dread Washington murmur - 'cover-up' - is starting to do the rounds.
At the same time, Ms Rice's public utterances have only fueled the controversy, contradicting Mr Clarke on a host of points. Startlingly, she is at odds with none other than Mr Bush's most powerful adviser of all, Dick Cheney. Mr Clarke, sniffed the vice-President this week, was "not in the loop", which is normally the ultimate Washington bureaucratic put-down. But not this time. Because in order to shore up the White House's basic contention that it did know what it was doing before 9/11, Ms Rice has had to make clear that its own counter-terrorism chief was indeed "in the loop." No wonder that newsrooms are dusting off that old headline 'White House in Disarray,' not seen since the most chaotic days of the Clinton presidency.
Today a successor administration trembles. And all because of a man of whom, just a week ago, no-one had ever heard.
Β© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
http://news.independent.co.uk |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
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Condoleezza Rice's Credibility Gap |
by Center for American Progress
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
27 Mar 2004
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A point-by-point analysis of how one of America's top national security officials has a severe problem with the truth
Pre-9/11 Intelligence
* CLAIM: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 5/16/02
* FACT: On August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." In July 2001, the Administration was also told that terrorists had explored using airplanes as missiles. [Source: NBC, 9/10/02; LA Times, 9/27/01]
* CLAIM: In May 2002, Rice held a press conference to defend the Administration from new revelations that the President had been explicitly warned about an al Qaeda threat to airlines in August 2001. She "suggested that Bush had requested the briefing because of his keen concern about elevated terrorist threat levels that summer." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]
* FACT: According to the CIA, the briefing "was not requested by President Bush." As commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed, "the CIA informed the panel that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA." [Source: Washington Post, 3/25/04]
* CLAIM: "In June and July when the threat spikes were so highβ¦we were at battle stations." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: "Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, Ashcroft did not give terrorism top billing in his strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI. A draft of Ashcroft's 'Strategic Plan' from Aug. 9, 2001, does not put fighting terrorism as one of the department's seven goals, ranking it as a sub-goal beneath gun violence and drugs. By contrast, in April 2000, Ashcroft's predecessor, Janet Reno, called terrorism 'the most challenging threat in the criminal justice area.'" Meanwhile, the Bush Administration decided to terminate "a highly classified program to monitor Al Qaeda suspects in the United States." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04; Newsweek, 3/21/04]
* CLAIM: "The fact of the matter is [that] the administration focused on this before 9/11." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: President Bush and Vice President Cheney's counterterrorism task force, which was created in May, never convened one single meeting. The President himself admitted that "I didn't feel the sense of urgency" about terrorism before 9/11. [Source: Washington Post, 1/20/02; Bob Woodward's "Bush at War"]
* CLAIM: "Our [pre-9/11 NSPD] plan called for military options to attack al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, ground forces and other targets -- taking the fight to the enemy where he lived." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: 9/11 Commissioner Gorelick: "There is nothing in the NSPD that came out that we could find that had an invasion plan, a military plan." Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: "Right." Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaida and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]
Condi Rice on Pre-9/11 Counterterrorism Funding
* CLAIM: "The president increased counterterrorism funding several-fold" before 9/11. β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/24/04
* FACT: According to internal government documents, the first full Bush budget for FY2003 "did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators" and "proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants." Newsweek noted the Administration "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." [Source: New York Times, 2/28/04; Newsweek, 5/27/02]
Richard Clarke's Concerns
* CLAIM: "Richard Clarke had plenty of opportunities to tell us in the administration that he thought the war on terrorism was moving in the wrong direction and he chose not to." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: Clarke sent a memo to Rice principals on 1/24/01 marked "urgent" asking for a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with an impending al Qaeda attack. The White House acknowledges this, but says "principals did not need to have a formal meeting to discuss the threat." No meeting occurred until one week before 9/11. [Source: CBS 60 Minutes, 3/24/04; White House Press Release, 3/21/04
* CLAIM: "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: "On January 25th, 2001, Clarke forwarded his December 2000 strategy paper and a copy of his 1998 Delenda plan to the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice." β 9/11 Commission staff report, 3/24/04
Response to 9/11
* CLAIM: "The president launched an aggressive response after 9/11." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: "In the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows. The papers show that Ashcroft ranked counterterrorism efforts as a lower priority than his predecessor did, and that he resisted FBI requests for more counterterrorism funding before and immediately after the attacks." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04]
9/11 and Iraq Invasion Plans
* CLAIM: "Not a single National Security Council principal at that meeting recommended to the president going after Iraq. The president thought about it. The next day he told me Iraq is to the side." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: According to the Washington Post, "six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 2-and-a-half-page document marked 'TOP SECRET'" that "directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq." This is corroborated by a CBS News, which reported on 9/4/02 that five hours after the 9/11 attacks, "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq." [Source: Washington Post, 1/12/03. CBS News, 9/4/02]
Iraq and WMD
* CLAIM: "It's not as if anybody believes that Saddam Hussein was without weapons of mass destruction." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/18/04
* FACT: The Bush Administration's top weapons inspector David Kay "resigned his post in January, saying he did not believe banned stockpiles existed before the invasion" and has urged the Bush Administration to "come clean" about misleading America about the WMD threat. [Source: Chicago Tribune, 3/24/04; UK Guardian, 3/3/04]
9/11-al Qaeda-Iraq Link
* CLAIM: "The president returned to the White House and called me in and said, I've learned from George Tenet that there is no evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11." β National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, 3/22/04
* FACT: If this is true, then why did the President and Vice President repeatedly claim Saddam Hussein was directly connected to 9/11? President Bush sent a letter to Congress on 3/19/03 saying that the Iraq war was permitted specifically under legislation that authorized force against "nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11." Similarly, Vice President Cheney said on 9/14/03 that "It is not surprising that people make that connection" between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, and said "we don't know" if there is a connection. [Source: BBC, 9/14/03]
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